The Supreme Court defended the shareholders of the “Narodnaya Kassa”

The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (SC) gave a chance to the shareholders of the bankrupt credit consumer cooperative (CPC) “Narodnaya Kassa” to stay with the money.

In September 2020, KPC was declared bankrupt due to accumulated debts. As part of the bankruptcy, the bankruptcy trustee discovered expenditure cash warrants for the return of funds to a number of shareholders in December 2019-January 2020 and challenged the issuance of money as a transaction that violates the rights of other creditors. The courts of three instances agreed that the shareholders were given preference and ordered them to return the money to the bankruptcy estate. Several citizens appealed against these decisions to the Supreme Court, stating that they only transferred their deposits to another consumer cooperative “Narodny” “without the physical transfer of funds”, moreover, it has not been proven that there was any money in the cash desk of the CCP at the time of the transactions. The cases were referred to the economic board for review.

The first on which the board of the Supreme Court made a decision was the case of Valentina Vorobyova with 1 million rubles. contributions. From the explanations of the persons involved in the case, it follows that the shareholders did not actually receive money from the CCP, the Supreme Court noted, and the share was transferred to another cooperative, but “due to the incompetence of the accounting department, this transfer was made by issuing debit cash warrants.” And if “fictitious settlements due to lack of funds in the cash desk of the cooperative” are proven, then the satisfaction of the manager’s application may lead to “illegal recovery of funds equal to the amount of the share that was not returned to the shareholders,” the board concluded.

To verify this circumstance, the dispute was sent for a new consideration. The Supreme Court also recommended that the courts consider combining all disputes with shareholders into one case for joint consideration.

Ekaterina Volkova